Sex Sites Sick of Getting Screwed

Noah Shachtman
09.13.03

Internet porn purveyors can pant a little easier now. The hacker who allegedly tried to extort money from triple-X webmasters has been arrested in Israel.

Earlier this summer, a hacker with the alias Deepsy demanded $1,500 each from at least three online smut-selling firms. If the companies refused to pay, he warned, he'd crash their Internet operations with distributed denial-of-service attacks. One site took as many as 745 million hits per day during what was believed to be a Deepsy-coordinated assault.

But all that may be coming to an end now. Police in the desert city of Be'er Sheva took 20-year-old Pavel Vladislav into custody on suspicion of blackmail, extortion, theft, interfering with an investigation and conspiracy, according to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot. In a posting to gofuckyourself.com (or GFY), the best-known bulletin board for porn webmasters, someone using the handle Deepsy1 identified himself as "Vladislav Pavlov" from Be'er Sheva.

"I hope he's gone. He deserves to go to jail for a long time," said one webmaster who was supposedly threatened by Deepsy. "He attempted to shut down businesses that make tens of thousands a day. Imagine walking into your local grocery store and shutting down their cash register system for a few days. There would be hell to pay."

Boaz Guttman, an Israeli attorney and computer-security expert, said that a California company, Cyber Trend, contacted him in early July, complaining that a hacker had threatened to take down its SilverCash.com adult webmaster affiliate service.

Guttman said he took Cyber Trend's allegations -- and supporting evidence, including 47 pages of server log files -- to the Israeli police's antifraud unit, headquartered in the town of Bat Yam.

But the authorities in Bat Yam blew him off, Guttman contends.

"Something dealing with sex websites, it's not for her (antifraud chief Miriam Golan's) tastes," he said. "She only wants me to come with (Secretary of Defense) Donald Rumsfeld's laptop."

Guttman went to the local authorities in Be'er Sheva instead to press Cyber Trend's case, and there he found a more receptive audience. The alleged hacker was arrested on the evening of Sept. 8, Guttman said. He claims that the FBI and Interpol are also pursuing this case.

Calls to Israeli authorities and to Cyber Trend executives seeking comment for this story were not returned. The FBI declined to comment, as well.

Online porn sellers had viewed Deepsy with a combination of amusement and fear, said Tom Hymes, editor at AVNOnline, the adult webmaster trade magazine. Deepsy's rants and threats made for good theater on message boards like GFY. But the damage he caused was all too real: home pages ruined, sites offline, revenue lost.

"We were down for an hour because of this character. The adult Internet is overall better off (now) that this annoyance is gone. And to the extent (the arrest) dissuades others, it's a good thing."

In an interview over instant messenger, Deepsy claimed some of his attacks were launched because the webmasters owed him money. He threatened to strike others when they called him a "script kiddie," a know-nothing hacker. Still others were given no reason at all. They were simply told, "You're next."

According to Israeli press reports (translated into English by Hebrew Translator), a magistrate in Be'er Sheva has ordered Vladislav, Deepsy's alleged alter ego, to be held in custody until next Tuesday, at least.